How to Get Everything You Want

"Our goals can only
be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and
upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success."

Pablo
Picasso, artist

Dr. Alan Zimmerman's
Personal Commentary:

Every occurrence in life is
based on probabilities. If, for example, you flip a coin in the air,
there's a 50/50 chance of it landing on heads or tails. And the same
truth applies to extraordinary success at work or even at home. Certain
actions have a low probability of bringing about success, while other
activities are very likely to work out.

That being the case, I've
noticed that EVERY highly successful person sets goals and then follows a
procedure that turns those goals into the payoffs they want. Obviously
there's a very high probability that GOALS really do work. That's why
GOALS is the third key I teach in my "Journey to the Extraordinary"
program ... which I will be delivering in Dallas on May 1-2, 2014.

So it's time to ask yourself a
question. Do you have goals written down for today, tomorrow, six weeks
from now, six months from now, and six years from now? I hope so ...
because your level of success is almost perfectly correlated with your
willingness and ability to set goals and on your discipline for taking action
on those goals. Here are five steps to get you started:

1. Think about
tomorrow ... today.

The past has one primary
purpose ... to teach you something. That's it. Learn from it and
move on.

Humorist Will Rogers said,
"Don't let yesterday take up too much of today." He knew if you
spend too much of your time thinking about the "If only's ... If only I
had a better education ... If only I didn't have this awful job ... If only I
had a better partner ... or whatever," you're basically stuck.
You're not moving toward the fulfillment of any new goals.

Think about the goals you want
to achieve in the future, but think about them today and every day.

2. Free up your
imagination.

Most people fail to become as
successful as they could be because they suffer from a clamped-down
imagination. They can't imagine they could do more, be more, or have
more. But when you learn how to free up that part of your brain,
amazingly powerful things happen.

After Dennis Wicklund, the
Treasury Manager for the United Health Group, attended the "Journey to the
Extraordinary," he told me, "I had heard about the goal-setting,
self-talk techniques you were teaching and I thought it was some kind of weird
'new-age' stuff. Not at all. You told me exactly how the mind
works, how to feed it the goals I wanted to achieve, stay positive, and achieve
more goals than ever before. The entire 'Journey' was wonderful, but your
goal-setting, self-talk techniques were Great, Great, Great. ’I'm a better
person for this. And I'll have to admit I felt like a sponge when you
were talking. Your insights were fascinating, and your
techniques have changed my life on and off the job."

It's what a freed-up
imagination will do for you. When Disney World was opened in Florida, a
tourist came up to Mike Vance, the Creative Director at Disney headquarters,
and said, "Isn't it too bad that Walt didn't live to see all this?"
Vance replied, "He DID. That's why it's here."

By contrast, if you don't have
a freed-up imagination, you won't achieve the great goals you could have
achieved. When Walt Disney bought his first plot of land in Anaheim for
what would eventually become Disneyland, he asked his friend Art Linkletter to
walk the property with him. After explaining his goals and vision, Disney
asked Linkletter if he'd like to go in on the deal. Linkletter said no,
that he would pass on this investment. Years later, Linkletter would say
that every step he took back to his car that day cost him $3 million.

3. Dedicate
yourself to quality.

Goal setting and goal achieving
is not some sloppy, haphazard, I'll-get-to-it-when-I-feel-like-it activity.
No. As I discuss in my upcoming book, "The Payoff
Principle," the real Producers in life produce real results because they
know "good-enough" is never "good enough." They are
dedicated to quality.

What does that mean? That
could be a whole seminar. But in part, quality comes from loving what you
do. As we finish the winter Olympics, I'm reminded of Bonnie Blair who
won five gold medals for speed skating in the 92 Olympics. Whenever she
was interviewed, no matter what the question, Bonnie would answer, "I LOVE
to skate." And when Larry King, who has interviewed every famous
person in the world during his 40-year TV career, was asked if all these people
had anything in common, he said, "Yes. They all have a passion for
what they do. They all love what they do."

But dedicating yourself to
quality also means dedicating yourself to hard work. Even though I'm
sometimes called a "motivational speaker," the title makes me cringe
just a little. Too many of the so-called "motivational
speakers" seem to imply that you can have anything you want without having
to work for it. Not true. As author and pastor Robert Schuller indicated,
"Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular
preparation."

4. Stick to it.

Disney even created his own
word for this ... sticktoativity. It was his way of saying, "Hang in
there. Keep on. Persist. Refuse to give up."
Without it, your dreams aren't going to be realized. Period!

Vicky Ernster, a Benefit
Specialist for the Olmsted Medical Center, said, "At your 'Journey to the
Extraordinary' program, I learned how to define my goals, write out my goals,
and then stick with them until they were accomplished. In addition to
that, I got so many techniques on how I can deal with my employees and family
members starting with the implementation of a customer-service attitude. This
stuff works."

5. Have fun as you
work on your goals.

You might think the great
Producers in life are those who do nothing but work. I mentioned work and
persistence in points 3 and 4 above, but that's just a part of the story.
Great Producers have always balanced the achievement of their goals with
fun. In fact, I would even argue that those Producers had the energy to
achieve so many of their goals because they made sure they had fun in the
process.

Whenever President Teddy
Roosevelt's children left the Oval Office, he would shout after them,
"Have fun." When Billy Graham, who has preached to more people
than any other person in history, was celebrating his 75th birthday, he was
asked what he wanted to be remembered for. He replied, "I want to be
remembered as a person who was fun to live with."

And when the media bashed First
Lady Barbara Bush for being overweight and a bit dowdy ... compared to her
predecessor, the fashion-conscious Nancy Reagan, Barbara had fun with that.
Mrs. Bush said, "Nancy Reagan adores her husband and I adore mine.
Nancy fights drugs; I fight illiteracy. Nancy is a size 3 and so is
my leg."

You've heard people say you can
have everything you want in life. That's a bit of a stretch. But
you can have almost everything you want in life ... IF you know how to set
goals and then implement the correct steps. Try these for starters.

ACTION:

Which of the five
goal-setting and goal-achieving steps do you need to focus on right now?
What are you going to do about it?

Reprinted with permission from Dr. Alan Zimmerman's Internet
newsletter, the 'Tuesday Tip.' For your own personal, free subscription to the
'Tuesday Tip' ... along with several other complimentary gifts, go to www.DrZimmerman.com.